Question about 2-cam shoot
 

OK, my next wedding shoot is next Sat. (April 8), and it's at a really cool venue (the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI). As you can probably tell by the title of the thread, this will be a 2-cam shoot, at least for the ceremony (in the event you're familiar w/the Henry Ford, it'll be at the Anderson Theater, reception in the museum area near the auto industry display and the presidential limos. Yes, the JFK limo is there). I can probably use the company's VX1000 as camera 2; my 18 y/o nephew will be running the camera - heaven help us all! It's supposed to be an unmanned camera, but I'm paying my nephew out of pocket, so the couple's getting a nice bonus, assuming nephew does well. I told him to just keep it in focus, don't jerk the camera, and keep me out of the shot, and everything else is gravy. He will be set up in the balcony to provide the wide/rear shots and to monitor the ambient audio from my Fostex MR-8. My nephew is pretty smart and has an interest in the business, so I don't expect him to let me down.

Question is, will the VX1000 give me a comparable picture to my PD-150? Also, in the unlikely event I can't score the VX1000, I'll have to use my Panasonic PV-GS120, which didn't really match the 1000 when I did this last year (it seemed to be redder/pinker). If y'all can give me any pointers on how to best match the two cams, I'll be eternally in your debt.

I'm really looking forward to this - it's going to be a fun & cool day!

John:
I was wondering the same thing about my Z1U and my Canon XL2. I have a wedding May 6th and was wondering about the images matching up. I just got the XL2 and will be testing to see how it matches up. I am guessing they will be fairly close, otherwise I will be spending some time on color correction in post. I'll watch the other responses to this thread as well.
John

You'll most likely need to color correct in post to match the cams color anyway, but i am sure you could get the 1000 close to the 150 so you wont be off too much. Make sure your nephew "KNOWS" not to be zooming in and out frequently or panning and tilting too much. A little of that stuff is ok but too much of it looks like doo doo.

OK, I just got home from the shoot an hour ago, and this may be the best one I've ever done. My nephew was awesome - I expected him to be merely competent and got much more. The only bad thing that happened was during the ceremony - I was recording a board feed and, as I found out later, something happened which forced the board op to cut the power to the system briefly - unfortunately, it took out my Fostex, so it never recorded anything. Even if I had known, I was nowhere near it, so I couldn't have restarted it anyway. It runs on 6 AA batteries - if only I had run it off that... :( I told the couple about it and they took it in stride - I told them I should be able to give them decent audio in spite of that. At least I was recording the groom's lav mike directly to the camera - if I had been recording it to the Fostex, I would have had a real problem.

The couple tipped us $150 (which we split, of course), and my nephew has a lock for a job with the DJ staff at the company I contract with. This 18 y/o kid really showed me something, and I was proud to have him along. He busted his a** for 11 hours and had fun doing so. I'll look at his footage tomorrow, and I don't expect to be disappointed.

Teenagers rock. Most have way more capacity for quick learning and *ss busting than they are given credit for. Given the right opportunity to demonstrate it they can *really* surpirse you. If you haven't already, I'm sure your nephew would really appreciate it if you let his parents know how impressed you are.

Congrats on the successful shoot!

-Chris

Yeah, I called my sister this afternoon and she told me he was so fired up he woke her at 2:00 am to tell her about it. Heck, he got a chance to do what he's been itching to do for quite a while (I had to wait until he turned 18, which was last December), met some cool people, got a delicious meal, had free run of a world-renowned historical museum, and walked away with a total of $150. Man, I wish I'd had a cool uncle like me... :)

This is where the ceremony was:

http://www.thehenryford.com/catering...on_theater.asp

And this is what the reception area looked like:

http://www.thehenryford.com/catering/museum_floor.asp

I watched his footage, and one thing that could stand some improvement was the run & gun stuff. I had him walk around the museum after dinner and shoot, well, pretty much everything he saw while I handled the bride & groom dances, etc., and he got some great stuff, but he must have forgotten to zoom the camera out, and it looks like he may have accidentally bumped the autofocus button (I gave him the VX1000). Things were a bit shaky, but there's enough there to make a unique montage. He did me proud where I really needed him, though, at the ceremony. The ceremony footage was exactly what I needed it to be - everything else was gravy. I will definitely use him again.

I was actually waiting for the "disaster" tale after your first post but thankfully everything turned out well. Sometimes people surprise you in their abilities.

Now all thats req'd is a bit of training for him and you will be away - he seems keen enough - and thats' not something you can buy!

kids
 

I've shot a few concerts in my church and used my eldest (12) for cam2 on the last one. We used hand signals to tell her what shot I wanted, close, medium, and out. I always made sure one camera was locked on before adjusting the other. Haven't gone over the footage yet but it should be alright.

I'm glad your event came out well. There is a lot of angst before the event and hopefully relief at the end.

Well, for what it's worth, he took a TV/video class in high school, so he did know how to focus properly, frame a shot, etc. I didn't have to show him as much as I thought I would - it was pretty much a primer on how to operate the VX1000 and a quick lesson on how and when to white balance, which we did over lunch at Burger King on the way to the event, using the back of the flyer they put on the tray as the "white" standard. That may have been more ghetto than my cordless mic contraption...

Henry Ford Museum
 

Hi John,

We are going to be in Detroit for a speaking engagement with the 4EVER Group next week. We are actually coming in early on Tuesday with hopes of going out to the Ford Museum. I'm a big Mustang fan. Do you have any advice on things to see while at the for Museum or while we are in the Detroit area? I also reall like MoTown, but didn't know if it was worth the trip to see where it all started.

I'm sorry I didn't see this before. For all who may go to the Henry Ford, they are very liberal about shooting video, and they gave us free run of the whole place. Yes, there are a lot of cars on display, including an original Mustang and an original '69 Ford GT-40, among many others. They have a special civil rights exhibit that features the very bus in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, restored to 1955 condition. When she passed away recently, they draped the bus in black in her honor. I highly recommend making the trip.

I have been to the Motown Museum (a/k/a Hitsville USA), and it is a great experience. I went way back in 1989, and you could actually touch most of the exhibits then (I plunked out the opening notes to "I Hear A Symphony" on the very same toy piano used in the song), and I don't know if they still allow that. I'm also not sure about their policy on shooting video there - my guess is that they frown on it unless you have prior permission. You can actually rent the place for receptions, etc. - how cool would THAT be?

Thanks John
 

Hi John,

We didn't have time to see both so we went to the Henry Ford Museum. I was expecting to see a lot of cars, but had no idea that it is really a museum of modern American History. It was awesome!